Have you noticed this NBA officiating change?

The NBA has reportedly made an in-season shift with the way officials are calling games. The philosophy adjustment seems to have been implemented after the All-Star break.

Although the NBA made no formal announcement that rules or interpretation of rules were changing, The Ringer, The Mercury News and ESPN have all alluded to variances in the way games were being called earlier in the season versus the way the whistles are being blown since mid-February.

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons articulated that the games have become more physical, as referees aren’t calling fouls with the same frequency that they were before. The Mercury News reported that foul volume metrics are actually down since the All-Star break.

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It would make sense that with fewer fouls called, teams aren’t going to the free throw line as much. The Athletic wrote about the sudden dip in scoring in the NBA, noting that teams are averaging nearly three fewer points from February 2024 to mid-March 2024 than they did from October 2023 through January.

The Athletic also pointed out that this occurrence is highly unusual, as scoring has tended to increase after the All-Star break.

The Athletic calculated that the largest decrease in foul calls has occurred in the mid-range part of the floor, which tends to be where contact increases as defenders try to stick with moving offensive players.

ESPN reported that the NBA’s competition committee met with the league office to discuss certain aspects of the aforementioned changes. A memo was circulated during that meeting addressing the notion that offensive players were leaning in unnatural directions, hoping to seek out contact.

However, in that memo, the league reiterated that they were not behind a fundamental change in how games are officiated. It does seem clear, though, that the topic is at the forefront of their minds.

In that ESPN report, it was said that the league is “continuing to evaluate the state of offensive vs defensive balance with a focus on legal guarding position and level of contact on pathway plays to the basket.”

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According to a story by The Denver Post, Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone doesn’t believe there’s any change to the way games are being called. “I don’t see it, because we never get foul calls. I don’t really see it. I haven’t noticed a difference.”

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr told Reuters in December 2023 that the plethora of fouls being called in the NBA was “disgusting.” “We are enabling players to B.S. their way to the foul line,” he said at the time. “If I were a fan, I wouldn’t have wanted to watch the second half of that game…it was just baiting refs into calls, but the refs have to make those calls.”

The Washington Post and Sportico questioned whether the NBA’s scoring explosion was actually the best thing for the game. In the Post story, Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers said, “I can tell you the guys are playing defense, but it’s harder to defend with the rules.”

While some feel like the ease with which getting a bucket has become comical, others remember a time where it was arguably too arduous to score in the NBA. RealGM wrote a piece about the league’s style of play in the early 2000s that prompted fans to dislike the rough and tumble nature of the game in those days.

“There’s no push here at the league office from me or anyone else that we want to see a certain score,” said Joe Dumars, head of basketball operations at the NBA, in an AP News story. That’s an intriguing point of view, considering that Dumars played for one of the most notorious defense teams of all-time, the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The New Yorker wrote about the nature in which NBA players and officials interact in March 2024. NBA players will always have an opinion about whether a foul call is correct or not, but the manner in which they convey that displeasure may have gone too far, according to the piece. This discourse may have also contributed to the foul increase and scoring boom in previous years.

Let us know what you think in the comments section, and chime in about whether you prefer higher scoring NBA contests or rugged defensive tilts!

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